Sorry for my part in being off topic. I'm all for scholarship, it's really cool. Especially when people do it for altruistic reasons.But sometimes it's nice to find a yummy post that speaks to the reality of the path. With the traditional teachings in mind. Seeing the teachings unfold in the world around us, and our own inner world.

So, how are the views of Buddhadasa Bikkhu regarded?I think since we have a living, breathing, and posting student of his among us, we ought to be picking his brain.With respect.

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

jcsuperstar wrote::offtopic: man this thing has gone waaay off topic, maybe some emoticon will get us back on track...

Well excuuuuuuuze us for using the internet to communicate with each other. And for using Dhamma Wheel to talk about Dhamma. I'm sure it must be a safe bet then that in 15 pages this debacle never once went off the rails until now.

Sorry to duck out before answering zerotime's jit-waang questions. Now in a different city, I can only get online thru a friend's machine but forgot my DW password & for some reason the system isn't sending it to me. This renders me unable to post & I leave for retreat in just a little bit. May y'all have pleasant abidings.

If it is too much right now to deal with these people then you might want to consider taking a break from "free-for-all" forums like this one. Stick to the "classical" forums. That's what I do from time to time when these folks just become too much for me to handle.

.e. wrote:Santikaro asked me to post this...--Sorry to duck out before answering zerotime's jit-waang questions. Now in a different city, I can only get online thru a friend's machine but forgot my DW password & for some reason the system isn't sending it to me. This renders me unable to post & I leave for retreat in just a little bit. May y'all have pleasant abidings.

Santikaro wrote:Btw, recent research on fundamentalism is pretty clear in pointing out how Biblical & other textual literalism are modern phenomena. We moderns may read early Buddhist texts more literally than the compilers, such as Ven Buddhaghosa, intended. That may be hard to prove, of course. But it's possible. Or are we really supposed to believe that the Buddha literally made heads split open?

Fundamentalism is the belief that the words of God/Buddha/etc. can somehow encapsulate the dynamic ever changing truth. It is a knee-jerk response to the truth claims of modernity (aka science). The dogma is held to and the non-believers, those other people, are told to go away, shut up or else! We are then one abortion clinic away from bombing. In a chaotic world we wish to find security… where better then in old words and static interpretations. It is a longing for the good ole days where the “Right” view was established and the villains vanquished by superheroes. We moderns have lost the ability to metaphorically contemplate to the event horizon of our own dissolution. That seems to have been jettisoned with the bathwater of antiquity. Reified literalisms remain. People, the dhamma was an oral tradition. Buddha taught to the circumstance and abilities of those in his culture…a lot has changed since then. In order to cross to the other shore you need 2 hands on the paddle. That is, you have to let go of the raft even while you are in the raft!

nathan wrote: ....Usually the same people who have a fundamental religious devotion to the cult of the PhD.

Funny thing about the "cult of the PhD", is that the primary concern of the sciences is to investigate things as they are, rather than to cling to speculative metahpysical views. Rather in line with the transcendent teachings of the Buddha, actually...

Those options seem counterproductive as, also in living experience, these lead to much greater suffering for myself and for others whereas I do find the teachings are literally and precisely the medicine I actually need in all regards. Useful for such far flung things as dealing effectively with the kamma that arises now which was created in past lives. Dealing effectively with heavenly beings and ghosts in my neighborhood. Living in peace with all earthly beings, both alone in the wilderness with fearsome wild beasts and when walking amongst the hypnotized masses of humanity and all of their deadly machinery.

No one is telling you that you cannot hold to your beliefs in speculative views. However, you seem to take issue with, and deride, others for not holding to your beliefs in speculative views:

Would it be best to keep those facts to myself and simply 'play along with everyone'. Most particularly with those who delusively think that the extensive discourses by the Buddha regarding such things as other realms, an untraceable long prior existence in bondage to being and becoming or the ongoing and insurmountable difficulties in overcoming the downward momentum of a wholly degenerate age and of the horrors that yet await humanity in times to come are 'simply hindu fairy tales' that corrupt monastics stuffed into the cannon when no one was looking.

You claim to be wounded by unnamed persons who claim "label" you:

Just because 'you have to play along to get along?' Because, that far out stuff matches up with the evening news very well actually. Does the daily underscoring of these facts in direct experience make me a 'fundie'? Should I feel inferior to someone because now they have come up with yet another label and feel at liberty to apply it to whoever they like?

Yet you are throwing out your own labels for those who do not follow your mandate to believe in your pet speculative views:

Most particularly with those who delusively think that the extensive discourses by the Buddha regarding such things as other realms

Pot. Kettle.

Is this the sort of thing I should be doing for the benefit of other people?

Would that help someone, maybe help someone's book sales? To falsely present myself as completely out of touch with the visceral reality of the present moment so that it could fit this idealized notion of a religious wing nut

You seem to be asking for the same sort of self-condemnation from those you deride.

....to suit a handful of people who want to 'update the teachings'...

Actually, it's not a matter of "updating the teachings" at all: The transcendental teachings have been there all along, taught by the Buddha himself, (though largely ignored nowadays) for those who are willing to give up speculative metaphysical views.

to match up with contemporary delusions of grandeur on the part of people who are our modern day 'best guessers'?

Ah, Appeal to Innuendo. Nice. There is no "guessing" involved at all when one does not cling to speculative metaphysical views.

I'm just curious to know where this whole line of reasoning is headed.

It seems to point to a general intolerance for those who do not hold or cling to your speculative views, and a need to attempt to bully and control what others think, as if that could ever happen.

Maybe I should make myself scarce so that I don't 'get in the way of progress'.

Have at it. Or perhaps it might be more constructive to examine what it is that makes you feel so threatened, to feel so much dukkha, about folks who don't hold to your speculative views. The Buddha mentioned this sort of thing in the Brahmajala Sutta, BTW:

146. Bhikkhus! When any of the samanas and brahmanas who speculate on the past, or the future, or both the past and the future, and adhere to beliefs relating to them, assert the many and varied (wrong) views about the past, or the future, or both, all of them are caught in the net of this discourse with all their sixty-two categories of wrong views, and if they try to rise (or sink), they rise (or sink) within the net, for all their views fall within the net of this discourse.

Of course, he also spoke of those of us who do not hold to such speculative views, right there in the same Sutta:

145. Bhikkhus! When a bhikkhu knows correctly the origin of the six sense bases of contact, their cessation, their pleasantness, their danger and the way of escape from them; he realizes the dhammas (Morality, sila; Concentration, samadhi; Wisdom, panna; Liberation, vimutti) that surpass all these (wrong) views.

nathan wrote: ....Usually the same people who have a fundamental religious devotion to the cult of the PhD.

Funny thing about the "cult of the PhD", is that the primary concern of the sciences is to investigate things as they are, rather than to cling to speculative metahpysical views. Rather in line with the transcendent teachings of the Buddha, actually...

Those options seem counterproductive as, also in living experience, these lead to much greater suffering for myself and for others whereas I do find the teachings are literally and precisely the medicine I actually need in all regards. Useful for such far flung things as dealing effectively with the kamma that arises now which was created in past lives. Dealing effectively with heavenly beings and ghosts in my neighborhood. Living in peace with all earthly beings, both alone in the wilderness with fearsome wild beasts and when walking amongst the hypnotized masses of humanity and all of their deadly machinery.

No one is telling you that you cannot hold to your beliefs in speculative views. However, you seem to take issue with, and deride, others for not holding to your beliefs in speculative views:

Would it be best to keep those facts to myself and simply 'play along with everyone'. Most particularly with those who delusively think that the extensive discourses by the Buddha regarding such things as other realms, an untraceable long prior existence in bondage to being and becoming or the ongoing and insurmountable difficulties in overcoming the downward momentum of a wholly degenerate age and of the horrors that yet await humanity in times to come are 'simply hindu fairy tales' that corrupt monastics stuffed into the cannon when no one was looking.

You claim to be wounded by unnamed persons who claim "label" you:

Just because 'you have to play along to get along?' Because, that far out stuff matches up with the evening news very well actually. Does the daily underscoring of these facts in direct experience make me a 'fundie'? Should I feel inferior to someone because now they have come up with yet another label and feel at liberty to apply it to whoever they like?

Yet you are throwing out your own labels for those who do not follow your mandate to believe in your pet speculative views:

Most particularly with those who delusively think that the extensive discourses by the Buddha regarding such things as other realms

Pot. Kettle.

Is this the sort of thing I should be doing for the benefit of other people?

Would that help someone, maybe help someone's book sales? To falsely present myself as completely out of touch with the visceral reality of the present moment so that it could fit this idealized notion of a religious wing nut

You seem to be asking for the same sort of self-condemnation from those you deride.

....to suit a handful of people who want to 'update the teachings'...

Actually, it's not a matter of "updating the teachings" at all: The transcendental teachings have been there all along, taught by the Buddha himself, (though largely ignored nowadays) for those who are willing to give up speculative metaphysical views.

to match up with contemporary delusions of grandeur on the part of people who are our modern day 'best guessers'?

Ah, Appeal to Innuendo. Nice. There is no "guessing" involved at all when one does not cling to speculative metaphysical views.

I'm just curious to know where this whole line of reasoning is headed.

It seems to point to a general intolerance for those who do not hold or cling to your speculative views, and a need to attempt to bully and control what others think, as if that could ever happen.

Maybe I should make myself scarce so that I don't 'get in the way of progress'.

Have at it. Or perhaps it might be more constructive to examine what it is that makes you feel so threatened, to feel so much dukkha, about folks who don't hold to your speculative views. The Buddha mentioned this sort of thing in the Brahmajala Sutta, BTW:

146. Bhikkhus! When any of the samanas and brahmanas who speculate on the past, or the future, or both the past and the future, and adhere to beliefs relating to them, assert the many and varied (wrong) views about the past, or the future, or both, all of them are caught in the net of this discourse with all their sixty-two categories of wrong views, and if they try to rise (or sink), they rise (or sink) within the net, for all their views fall within the net of this discourse.

Of course, he also spoke of those of us who do not hold to such speculative views, right there in the same Sutta:

145. Bhikkhus! When a bhikkhu knows correctly the origin of the six sense bases of contact, their cessation, their pleasantness, their danger and the way of escape from them; he realizes the dhammas (Morality, sila; Concentration, samadhi; Wisdom, panna; Liberation, vimutti) that surpass all these (wrong) views.

PeterB wrote:Perhaps i am schizoid, but have never found any problem with sitting comfortably ( metaphorically ) with Ajahn Buddhadhasa AND Ajahn Chah.

Ajahn Chah was a big fan of Ajahn Buddhadasa, used to play his talks from tapes and recommended monks to read his books if they wanted to learn Dhamma. Also the current abbot of Ajahn Chah's monastery likes to read and quote from Ajahn Buddhadasa's texts a lot. (On the other hand, in the Dhammayut forest tradition Buddhadasa is not liked, though that may also be for political reasons.)